Bright Sword: Starting from the Improved Grenade

"Hello, Director Zhao!"

At the door of the New 1st Regiment’s warehouse, two soldiers from the New 1st Regiment who were standing guard saluted Zhao Tianyang who was walking over.

"Well, hello."

After returning the greeting, Zhao Tianyang went straight to the door of the warehouse, took out the key and opened the door.

As soon as he entered, Zhao Tianyang saw mountains of cotton inside. These were the ones Li Yunlong had robbed from a Japanese warehouse a week ago.

After bringing them back, I gave some to the villagers, and then made a cotton jacket for each soldier of the new regiment. The rest were piled here.

After thinking about it, Zhao Tianyang selected a bundle of packed cotton, spread his legs, leaned over and exerted force.

"Hmph~~~"

Zhao Tianyang's face turned red before he picked up the cotton, but it was just a dream to take it back to the arsenal.

"Damn, it's so heavy!"

Zhao Tianyang felt that this bag of packed cotton weighed at least two or three hundred kilograms.

"Come here, two people, help me take this cotton back to the arsenal."

Zhao Tianyang had no choice but to go back to the door and shout to the soldiers there.

"okay."

A soldier quickly called over a strong young man, who then used a rope to wrap around the bag of cotton several times.

Then he squatted with his back turned, a muffled groan was heard, and the young man stood up with the cotton on his back.

"Amazing!"

Zhao Tianyang was stunned. No wonder people said that the older generation was stronger.

"hey-hey."

The young man smiled shyly: "Director Zhao, are you leaving now?"

"Come on, follow me."

Soon they arrived at the stream. As the weather was getting cooler, the temperature of the stream water became very low during the day.

So there were ten employees from the arsenal on the scene, carefully dripping the mixed acid in ceramic basins to make nitroglycerin.

"Leave it here."

Zhao Tianyang casually pointed to a relatively clean place and asked the soldier to put down the cotton.

After the soldiers left, Zhao Tianyang found two employees who had completed the nitroglycerin process.

Ask them to help open the cotton, clean out the debris inside, and then put it into the stream to wash it carefully.

After washing it clean, Zhao Tianyang bent over and prepared to carry the cotton back to the arsenal. You can imagine that the cotton was full of water and it almost doubled in weight.

This forced Zhao Tianyang to call all the employees near the stream over.

Everyone worked together to squeeze out the water, so that they had enough energy to carry all the cotton back to the arsenal.

"Okay, put them all here."

Outside the arsenal, next to a large pot used to refine oil, Zhao Tianyang took out a pack of cigarettes and said to several employees who were helping.

"Thank you for your hard work, everyone, have a smoke."

"Oh, thank you, Director."

"Director, you are my father!"

The employees cheered, as they didn't have many opportunities to smoke, let alone foreign cigarettes.

Seeing this, Zhao Tianyang smiled, turned around and lit the pot: "You can't smoke in vain, someone come and light the fire."

"I come!"

A smart employee came over immediately. He was freezing cold from washing cotton, so lighting a fire would be just like warming himself by the fire!

Seeing this, the other employees who were slow to react could only stop in disappointment.

"Don't be disappointed, come and fetch some water. When you finish, each of you will be rewarded with a cigarette."

Hearing that there were still cigarettes left, the people were no longer cold and ran as fast as they could. In two or three steps, they filled the two large water vats.

After distributing cigarettes to several people as promised, Zhao Tianyang put the cotton into boiling water, then added some caustic soda and covered the pot.

"Bring out some wood and turn the fire down."

"okay."

Ten minutes later, Zhao Tianyang took out a few pairs of rubber gloves and asked several employees who had just finished smoking to scrub the cotton that had just been boiled with plenty of water.

Ten minutes later, Zhao Tianyang put the completely clean cotton on a bamboo pole to dry.

At this point, the cotton wool is finished.

After instructing his employees to knead the remaining cotton according to his previous steps, Zhao Tianyang left. It had been almost a day and he didn't know whether Master Li and the others had finished it.

.....................

"Dang Dang Dang..."

Next to a blast furnace outside the arsenal, blacksmith Wang was holding a piece of iron with tongs and hammering it hard on the anvil.

Next to him was Carpenter Li, who was leading his men to assemble a wooden machine.

"how's it going?"

Zhao Tianyang walked over and asked.

“It’s the factory director!”

Carpenter Li quickly put down the work in his hands and stood up: "It will take another half a day, mainly because Master Wang needs to beat the iron pieces one by one."

"Row."

Zhao Tianyang glanced at the sweaty blacksmith Wang, said nothing, nodded, and left.

The next morning, Zhao Tianyang had someone move away the brazier surrounding the cotton wool, then walked forward and touched it.

"Yeah, it's dry."

"Bring your stuff and let's go."

At Zhao Tianyang's command, three employees immediately stepped forward and picked up all the cotton wool. There were two other employees next to them, holding several ceramic jars of different sizes.

Soon everyone arrived at the stream. Zhao Tianyang asked someone to put a large clay jar into the stream, and then asked someone to pour the sulfuric acid and nitric acid in the small clay jar into it to make a mixed acid.

Pay attention to the sulfuric acid and nitric acid here. Do not use concentrated sulfuric acid and concentrated nitric acid because concentrated sulfuric acid and concentrated nitric acid will form strong gunpowder cotton after soaking the absorbent cotton, which can only be dissolved in acetone.

But acetone is not easy to deal with, so Zhao Tianyang used dilute sulfuric acid and dilute nitric acid, and the soaked cotton wool formed weak guncotton.

Weak guncotton can be dissolved in alcohol, and Zhao Tianyang has plenty of alcohol, so he has as much as he needs.

At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, in the open space outside the arsenal, Zhao Tianyang looked at the four wooden machines in front of him and nodded with satisfaction.

"It looks good, let's try it and see what it's like!"

"Don't worry, Director, there will be absolutely no problem!"

Carpenter Li patted his chest and assured that after the four machines were completed, he tested them several times himself to ensure that they would not fall apart or be loose.

"Row."

Since Master Li was so confident, Zhao Tianyang took everyone without saying a word and came to a stone mill with the weak guncotton that had been made and dried this morning.

A man held a winnowing basket filled with weak guncotton and kept putting the weak guncotton into the small holes of the millstone.

One person acts as an ox or horse, constantly turning the millstone to make it move and crush the weak guncotton that has entered the millstone.

After completely crushing the weak fire cotton twice in a row, Zhao Tianyang put the weak fire cotton into the big pot and started cooking again.

After boiling for dozens of minutes, take out the weak guncotton and wash it with clean water. After repeating this process several times, the residual acid in the weak guncotton can be completely removed.

This step is to prevent the weak guncotton from "denitrification" and losing its combustion performance.

Just when Zhao Tianyang was excitedly preparing for the next step of gelling the nitrocellulose, Li Yun came over.

"It's time for dinner, Director."

Hearing this, Zhao Tianyang realized that the sun was about to set.

"Okay, we'll do the rest tomorrow."